116 SOPHOCLES. The constitution of such a committee was necessarily aristocratic and two years after, B.C. 411, Sophocles, once the favourite of the people and the colleague of Pericles, fell into the plans of Peisander and the other conspirators, and consented in the temple of Neptune, at his own Colonus, to the establishment of a council of four hundred ; in other words, to the subversion of the old Athenian constitution'"^. He afterwards defended his policy on the grounds of expediency^. Nicostrata had borne him a son, whom he named lophon : he had another son Ariston, by Theoris of Sicyon, whose son, Sophocles, was a great favourite with his grandfather and namesake. From this reason, or because, ac- cording to Cicero, his love for the stage made him neglect his affairs, his son lophon charged him with dotage and lunacy, and brought him before the proper court, with a view to remove him from the management of his property. The poet read to his judges a part of the (Edipus at Colonus, which he had just finished, and triumphantly asked "if that was the work of an idiot?" Of course the charge was dismissed^. We are sorry to say that this very pretty story is a mere fabrication, for the (Edipus at Colonus must have been acted, at least for the first time, before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war^. So- phocles died in the very beginning of the year 405 b. c. ; according to Ister and Neanthes he was choked by a grape, which the actor Callippides brought him from Opus, at the time of the Anthesteria. Satyrus tells us that he died in consequence of exerting his voice too much while reading the Antigone aloud ^: others say that his 1 Aristot. Polit. VI. 5, lo: 5e? yap dvai rb avvdyou rb Kvpiov rrjs TroXtretas. KoXecrat 5' &6a fih irpb^ovXoL 5ia Tb irpolSovXeijeiv- Sttou 5^ rb irXijOos eari, (SovXt] fidWov. 2 Thucyd, VIII, 67 : ^vviKKrjaav t7]v eKKXrjaiau els rbv KoXcouSv {^an 8k lepbv ILocu- Zdvos 'i^w TToAews airexov aradiovs fidXiaTa 5e/ca) k.t.X. Kai crvfj.7repaii>6/j.€uov, eav epihrrffia troirj rb cvp,7r ipaa/xa, ttjv alriau eiireiv' oXov 'Lo4>okXt)s epurdo/xevos virb IleLadvdpov, " el ^do^ev avTi^, biairep /cat rots oXXols vpo^oij- XoiS, KaTaaTTjcraL roijs rerpaKoalovs ;'" ^(pTj. — Ti§^ ov irov7]pd aoc ravra edoKei ehat;" ^(pV- " OvK odv (TV ravra ^vpa^as rd 7roj'7?pd;" " Nai," ^(prj, " ov yap rjv dXXa /SeXrtw." Aristot. Jihet. iii. 18.
- Vit. Anonym.; Cicero, de Seneciute, § 7; Val. Max. viii.
- See Reisig, Enarrat. (Ed. Col. pp. v sqq. ; J. W. Suvern, On some historical
and 'political allusions in Ancient Tragedy, pp. 6, 8 ; Lachmann, in the Ehe in. Mus. for 1827, pp. 313 fol. ; Hermann in Zimmermann's Zeitschrift, 1837, No. 98, pp. 803 sqq., inclines to the opinion that the (Edip. Col. was written before, but not published till after, the Peloponnesian war. ^ We have seen that l(rxvo4>(jouia was attributed to Sophocles : if it arose from delicate lungs, this account of his death is probable enough. There are chronological objections to the other two statements. See Clinton, F. H. ii. p. 85.
